November in Beijing: A Blizzard, the Old Summer Palace, School Visit, Thanksgiving, 798, and Channukkah!

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back to Astronomer in Beijing! I hope you all had a great November, a wonderful Thanksgiving (more on mine shortly), and that the beginning of winter hasn’t been too chilling! As you can see from the title, winter hit hard and fast here in Beijing. If you are celebrating Channukkah, I hope you’re having a lovely Festival of Lights and got to eat a few latkes! Before I dive into what I was up to this month, I wanted to say that I hope you’re all continuing to stay safe and healthy. I know that as the weather turns and gets colder it’s more difficult to see people outside, so I hope you’re able to pivot and find new ways to see friends and family in a safe manner. Here in Beijing, things are going pretty well in terms of COVID, although everyone is a bit on edge between Omicron and the impending 2022 Winter Olympics (yes, they start in February), as to how the city will respond. Unfortunately, due to a handful of COVID cases in Shanghai, Tsinghua is still asking us not travel and definitely not to Shanghai, so I haven’t gotten to either go visit Jesse or have him come visit me.

Also, before telling you about my month, I just wanted to reflect a bit on the upcoming Holiday season. Between Thanksgiving, Channukkah, and New Years (and for those on the other side of the street, Christmas), the end of November through the beginning of January is a wonderful time to see loved ones. Although I was able to have a wonderful Thanksgiving, it was also the first time I haven’t been with my parents to celebrate and although I was able to join them virtually via zoom, it’s definitely hit just how far away I am from home. I hope you all take the time to enjoy your family time if you’re able to see them in person this holiday season and if you have a relative who’s abroad and can’t be with family, reach out to them! I can’t tell you how comforting it is to get an e-mail from a familiar face to see how I’m doing.

Beijing Blizzard

As the title of this portion implies, winter got off to a quick start here in Beijing. During the first weekend of November, I experienced my first snowstorm here in Beijing. Although climate-wise, Beijing is rather similar to Boston, in general Beijing doesn’t get much snow. As such, I was pretty surprised to look out my window and see a healthy 3-4 inches of snow. Now, you’re probably wondering why I referred to it as a blizzard. Well, I’m just following the model of the media in this case. Because Beijing isn’t a snowy city, people and public transportation weren’t really prepared to deal with the snow and this snowfall resulted in plane delays, bus cancellations, and general chaos on the roads.

Because this was my first snowfall in Beijing, I wanted to visit Houhai and see what the lakes and parks looked like covered in snow. You can see some of the photos below. Although the sidewalks were covered in snow, the lake didn’t frozen over. However, there were tons of kids out having snowball fights and playing around. I think my favorite sight was of a man cleaning his driveway by turning his hose on and spraying the snow away (I had to snap a picture of that). Clearly he’d never experienced snow before because this seems to me like a surefire way to create an ice rink!

Visiting the Old Summer Palace (in Winter)

Although I’ve done a lot of exploring Beijing, I haven’t done a ton of purposeful sightseeing (other than going to the Great Wall). One of the reasons has been that it’s generally way more fun to do things with other people than just go by myself. Thankfully, the beginning of November brought the arrival of another foreign postdoc to the Astronomy department (Hi Richard!). Since neither Richard nor I have been to Beijing before coming to Tsinghua, we’re both excited to explore some of the more famous historical sights in the city. Thus, after almost three months living in Beijing, I did my first in city sight seeing. Specifically, we decided to stay close to Tsinghua and visit the Old Summer Palace. Although it isn’t summer (thankfully the snow was gone after a few days, so it was just kind of cold), the gardens are still amazing. For those of your who are wondering, it’s called the Old Summer Palace because there is in fact a New Summer Palace (commonly referred to as the Summer Palace – more about why there are two below). We chose the Old Summer Palace first because it’s a bit smaller and we thought would be easier to see everything in a few hours. Boy were we wrong! The grounds are sprawling! As you can see in the following pictures, the sprawling grounds include a traditional Chinese garden, complete with Temple-esque buildings and many well-manicured gardens, koi ponds, and pagodas.

One of the highlights was these incredibly picturesque black swans. I’m sure there is some kind of symbolism involved here, but I’m not familiar with it.

After wandering around the gardens for about an hour, we finally arrived at the ruins of the Old Summer Palace. For a brief history lesson, the Old Summer Palace was built in the 18th and 19th Centuries as a secondary residence of the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (away from the Forbidden city). As should be evident from the pictures below, the main residence was built in a Western style (which interestingly makes the ruins feel far more like something in Europe – it’s a bit reminiscent of all of the remnants of Ancient Rome). Much like the Forbidden City, the grounds were originally closed off to commoners, so it’s pretty cool that they are open to the public now. The palace was unfortunately destroyed as a result of the Opium Wars between the British and the Chinese (the irony was not lost on Richard – he’s British). The brief overview is that the Chinese imprisoned a negotiation delegation, which resulted in the British and French forces led by Lord Elgin (this one was the son of the one who stole the Elgin Marbles) destroying the palace. To not be outdone by his father’s ransacking, according the wikipedia, the exquisite artworks that once filled the palace can be found in some 47 museums around the world.

Although much of the palace is in ruins, it’s easy to imagine how magnificent the palace must have been, especially when viewed from the right angle to highlight the towering palatial nature. However, you can still see the intact stone maze with an ornate stone pagoda at the center. You’d think with two Astrophysics postdocs, we’d have breezed through the maze, but we had our fair share of difficulty finding the exit.

Ultimately, seeing the Old Summer Palace left me in awe of the level of destruction of the British Empire. I like to think that I’m fairly familiar with East Asian history (ok, really Japanese history, not so much China), but I’ wasn’t familiar with the full scale of the Opium Wars beyond the Boxer Rebellion. I think sometimes when teaching history, we like to frame the West as the good guys in a might makes right power play and gloss over the destruction we left in our wake. While I’m not saying that the Chinese were definitively in the right, it’s important to remember the harmful impact of European colonization on the rest of the world. Additionally, I was very taken by the clear European influences in the architecture. I generally think of Chinese architecture in very strict boxes, but seeing both the influence of the West was rather intriguing and reminded me of my visit to Giverny, Monet’s estate in France, where the infatuation with the Japanese aesthetic is apparent. Additionally, seeing the remains makes me only more excited to continue to visit other temples and the New Summer Palace. It’s worth noting that Richard and I only saw about a quarter of the grounds, so we’ll definitely be back!

One unexpected surprise was coming across a bust of Victor Hugo. I’m a big fan of Les Miserables (both the book and the musical), but I was a bit surprised to see a bust of a Westerner on the grounds destroyed by British and French troops. Apparently, Hugo had written a scathing commentary on the looting of the grounds (unfortunately my French is a bit rusty, so I couldn’t follow all of the nuance of the text below) and has been memorialized for it. I have to wonder if that’s led to any extra fandom for Les Miserables here in China.

Visiting the Beijing Concordia College of Sino-Canada

Although the overwhelming majority of my time in graduate school was spent doing research and exploring galaxy clusters, one of the things that I enjoyed as a nice change of pace was to do outreach. In particular, I have many fond memories of going into my cousin Alex’s elementary class at the Kingsley Montessori School in Boston. When I accepted the position here in China, I wasn’t really sure if outreach was going to be as easy to do (mostly due to my lack of Mandarin). Happily, I’ve found that that is not the case. Thanks to my friend Laurel, who I met at Kehillat Beijing and is the head of schools of the Beijing Concordia College of Sino-Canada, I was invited to spend the day at the school and tell lots of students about Astronomy! I was able to do this because it’s an English language school, so all of the students speak English (although the younger students were certainly more comfortable speaking than some of the high schoolers).

I couldn’t have asked for a better visit! I arrived around 9 am and spent the morning chatting with a few of the different teachers before presenting in SIX different classes (they have a period system like they do at Maple Ave). My first two presentations were to the seniors. Because the teachers wanted all of the Senior students to see my presentation, they combined the various classes so that each presentation had about 40 students. Because these students were a bit older, I gave a presentation similar to what I’d done in the Astronomy on Tap back in Boston. Although the Seniors were a little less enthusiastic, I did get some good questions. After these two presentations, I got lunch with Laurel, some of the other teachers, and a few students. We talked a bit about astronomy, but also about college in the US and I tried to do my best sell of US liberal arts colleges and the benefits of going to a smaller school (OK, Brown isn’t small, but ~ 6,500 undergrads is way smaller than 20,000). Following lunch, I joined one of the third grade classes. Unlike the presentation for the 12th graders, I really only put together a powerpoint full of pretty pictures and was hoping that just like when I used to visit Alex’s classes that the students would just ask questions. Boy did they deliver. It was 40 minutes of non-stop questions about stars, planets, aliens, and black holes. The kids were so enthusiastic and super comfortable speaking English! I finished up the day with three back-to-back-to-back presentations to the sixth grade classes. For this one, I had prepared a presentation focusing on what it means to be an astronomer and a bit of my research. Here, the students were again very enthusiastic (and their teacher had made sure that they were really prepared with questions), so after my 20 minute presentation, they had lots of questions about my job! Although I was definitely exhausted by the end of the day (my legs were shot and my voice was horse), I had a ton of fun and hope that I’ll get the chance to visit again and maybe visit some other schools, too!

For a bit of a Beijing geography lesson, the school is in Tongzhou, which is about an hour and half by public transportation from Gulou (and in the opposite direction of Tsinghua – it’s by the new Universal Studios in Beijing). Since most of you probably haven’t been to a school in Beijing, I wanted to share all of the pictures of the school with you all. It was interesting to walk around the school and see the various signs, some of which were reminiscent of the signs in classrooms or the hallways of Lake Avenue and others that are a bit different. All of the classrooms had the “Core Socialist Values” signs, which you wouldn’t find in the states. Also, you can see in the photos that the younger students all wear and jump suit style uniform. While the high schoolers have more traditional uniforms, there’s definitely a lot of leeway when it comes to those, so there a few students who put some more style and flare into their outfits (and looked liked they just walked out of a manga). Most of the students are Chinese, though I believe they all need to hold a foreign passport to attend the school. In terms of the teachers and staff, everyone that I met were very lovely. There were a good mix of Chinese nationals and foreigners (from the US, Canada, South Africa, … – even on from good old Rhode Island!).

Also, just to clarify the name, although originally founded as a high school, the school has since expanded to include elementary and middle school.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hopefully to nobody’s surprise, Thanksgiving isn’t really a holiday here in China. Unlike my usual routine of doing the Turkey Trot, watching the Macy’s Day Parade, and seeing a movie, before sitting down to dinner, this year was spent as a normal work day. However, because there is a pretty large expat community, there were a ton of Thanksgiving dinners organized around the city. Since my typical Thanksgiving dinner is pretty atypical – I can’t remember ever going to a Thanksgiving dinner with a real turkey (Vegetarianism for the win!) – I was delighted when my friend Rachel from Kehillat asked if I was interested in going to the Vegans of Beijing’s Thanksgiving dinner. I’d seen a lot of the Vegans of Beijing events on WeChat, but hadn’t had a chance to go to one and this was definitely a great first event for me! Given the communal nature of the event, I got to meet a number of really nice people (there were about 60 people in total) and have a delicious meal (see below)!

The dinner was held at El Barrio Sanlitun, which is a Mexican restaurant here in Beijing, so everything had a bit of a Southwestern flare. The menu consisted of pozole de guajillo (a Mexican soup), a raw veggie salad with Tahini dressing, gravy, grilled bread, sweet potato & jalapeno casserole, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, grilled baby corns (done up Mexican style), and stuffed onions (other than the soup, all of the dishes were portioned for four people). The meal was amazing and was only topped by an even more exquisite dessert trio of pumpkin pie, baked apple crumble (two pictures here), and dark chocolate pretzel bark! I also got a lovely passion fruit juice. Everything was amazing and I don’t think I can pick a favorite. You can see a few more photos from the night that to show the ambiance of the restaurant and just how much fun I was having!

One of the joys of being an expat celebrating a distinctly non-Chinese holiday is that the holiday tends to get a bit extended. In my case, I was part of three Thanksgiving dinners. Obviously the first dinner was the Vegans of Beijing dinner. For the second, via the wonders of zoom, Jesse and I were able to join our parents for Thanksgiving. Although I didn’t eat anything at this one (it was at 8am for me), it was really special to get to celebrate with them half a world away. My third Thanksgiving dinner was the Kehillat Beijing Thanksgiving Shabbat. It was a lovely second Thanksgiving and really nice to celebrate with my expat community (and even have seitan shaped like a turkey)!

Art Exhibit and 798!

The following Sunday, I was invited to visit an art show that included pieces by one of the members of Kehillat Beijing. The artist, Michael, is originally from New York, but he came to China ten years ago to study Buddhist history and art. He’s currently a postdoc at Peking University (which the Chinese refer to as Bei-da), so we’ve had a number of discussions about life as a postdoc. Although I’ve been to a number of art exhibits in my life, it’s always special to have the artist explain his (or her) art. In this case Michael explained the intricacies of how the landscapes are created (the goal is to represent the full 3D perspective rather than a specific angle) and how this tradition dates back to the 5th and 6th Century in China. I’ve always been impressed by ink wash landscapes that characterize East Asian art, but it was also cool to see some of the more inventive modern twists, including the subtle use of color, or in Michael’s case, using his fingers to paint instead of a brush. My favorite of Michael’s pieces was his triptych showing a tree, in which he took full advantage of using negative space.

One of the things that I was excited about was that the exhibit is in the 798 art district, which is the major artsy/gallery area here in Beijing. 798 originated as old Bauhaus style German factories in Beijing. As the factories were abandoned, artists turned the space into art studios. However, when the Beijing government was trying to figure out what to do with the space (i.e., were they going to turn it into new apartments), they chose to keep it as an art space, and instead just raise the rents. This led the artists to transform the space from studio to gallery space. The entire area has a vibrance that reminds me more of NYC than of most of Beijing (it has a bit more of Shanghai vibe, but only if you crammed all the street art in Beijing into one section of the city). It’s pretty amazing just to walk around in. You can see a ton of Modern art influence (and even some anime influence – yes, that’s Frieza from Dragon Ball Z) and there’re all sorts of galleries, some of which are free (we wandered into an exhibit of rugs as part of the Bahrain consulate). I’ll definitely be back to do a bit more exploring as I really loved just wandering around here. I also want to highlight this really cool calligraphy art (it’s the Giant Yellow letters). I want you all to take a long look at it as you all should be able to read it!

Happy Channukkah! Chag Channukkah Same’ach!

As many of you are probably aware, Channukkah started last Sunday, right after Thanksgiving (I know people always say that holidays can creep up on you, but it definitely felt that way this year, since Channukkah was about as early as it can be). Although I’ve been able to do a lot of celebrating (see below), I will say that one major difference in terms of Channukkah is that it is way more difficult to get candles here in China. I’m so used to walking into Star Market in Boston or Price Chopper in Saratoga and picking up a box of 44 candles for a couple bucks. I thought TaoBao (sort of the Chinese equivalent of the Amazon Marketplace) might be the solution, but after searching Channukkah candles, Jewish candles, and Menorah candles (that was the winner), the only candles I could find cost ~ 300rmb (that’s about $50, which is a bit ridiculous). Thankfully, through the Kehillat community, I was able to get in touch with the Chabad Jewish community and get candles (and another menorah) from them for ~ 45rmb (or $8, which is far more reasonable). I’ll have to remember them when I inevitably need matzah in a couple of months.

As the trip to 798 with members of Kehillat was Sunday afternoon, Roberta & Ted invited us all to their home for a small Channukkah celebration, complete with lots of singing (including a rousing rendition of Adam Sandler’s Channukkah song), candles, dreidels, latkes, and sufganiyot! It was a lovely way to kick off the Festival of Lights!

Last Friday, we had a second Channukkah celebration with Kehillat Beijing’s Channukkah themed Shabbat celebration! Here we had even more latkes (including some delicious vegan latkes that Ted made)! Because Roberta is visiting her mother in the US, I had the opportunity to lead services this week, so I tried to make it a bit festive by starting the night with O Hanukkah and ending again with the Channukkah Song! It was a very fun night filled with lots of friends and even more delicious foods. Although I miss getting to celebrate with my parents, I’ve enjoyed sending them pictures of my menorah each night (see above) and am glad I’ve been able to celebrate with friends. I even have one more Channukkah party this Sunday afternoon (which I’ll include in next month’s entry)!

Life at Tsinghua/Astronomy Update

In terms of Astronomy, this was a bit of a frustrating month. I spent most of the time working away on Project Morphology – my study of galaxy morphology in protoclusters using the Hubble Space telescope. As to not bore you all with the details, I’ve been having difficulty accurately estimating the morphology because our estimate of the shape of a star isn’t as good as I’d like it to be. I’ve been e-mailing/chatting with some collaborators (thank you Emily, Lu, and Brian!) as well as the creator of the software I’m using (the program I’m using has a very responsive facebook users group) and have a few more ideas I want to try before I sit down with Zheng to try to figure out what the best solution is. Thankfully, having other multiple projects has meant that when I get stuck on one project, I’ve been able to pivot to another. As such, I’m inching ever closer to some new results in Project Radio! Hopefully, I’ll have some more results to share on that front by the end of the year. Other than that, the only other Astronomy thing of note was that there was a partial lunar eclipse that was “theoretically” visible from China. While Jesse shared really great photos from Shanghai in his last blog, the air quality in Beijing isn’t always the most cooperative (more below), so the best I could do were some hazy photos (like the one shown here). Even still, it was cool to try to see it.

Additionally on the Astronomy front, I’m now in charge of organizing Zheng’s weekly group meeting! He had messaged the group that he wasn’t able to make a meeting a couple of weeks ago, but still wanted us to meet. I volunteered to lead the meeting and since Zheng has handed over the reins to me. Right now, I’ve been able to just ask for volunteers, and have gotten students to sign up to present. Hopefully, I won’t have to pull anybody’s teeth to get them to present as I think getting comfortable with public speaking is super important for science. Right now, my personal group meeting goal is to see if we can move the time from Saturday at 9am (because that’s just too early for a Saturday – and why we’re meeting on Saturday is a whole other story).

In terms of life at Tsinghua, the major changes have been the arrival of Richard (it’s really great to have another foreign postdoc to explore Beijing with) and moving offices. In mid-October, all of the postdocs in the Astronomy Department were notified that due to a Space (physical space, not Astronomy space, ha ha) issue, all of the postdocs were going to be moved into offices in a different building (it’s about a 6 minute walk to the department now). While it’s a bit disappointing to physically not be in the department since it feels like we’re now even more isolated from the rest of the department, so far the new office is working well. My desk is next to Richard’s and I’m right by the window that overlooks the Tsinghua Art Museum (I really need to visit it!) (the old office is the first three pictures, while the new office are the remaining pictures). I do wish that we could have stayed in the same building, but I understand that the grad students need their own space. It is just a bit annoying that to go meet with Zheng I have to bundle up.

Additionally, as a small BU shoutout, during one of the colloquia this month on AGNs, I noticed two very familiar names in the slides. Prof. Al Marscher was one of my dissertation committee members and Dr. Nick MacDonald was a fellow graduate student who I also TA’ed for. It’s always cool to see some familiar names in talks!

Beyond that, I wanted to share a few picturesque views of the campus from when I was walking around and when some of the postdocs took Richard out to lunch. I’m always in awe of how pretty the campus is and am enjoying seeing it change as the seasons do. I also was told that one of the buildings pictured below was modeled after a building at the University of Virginia. If anyone has visiting UVa, and wants to confirm this, please do! I also found out that Tsinghua, or at least Tsinghua Admissions has a cute Tiger mascot! I’m going to have to get something featuring it!

Exploring Beijing

Many of you have probably been surprised that so many of the pictures that I’ve taken show blue skies here in Beijing. When I was planning to move here, I read a ton about how bad the air pollution is in Beijing. While the air quality was very good here in the early fall most days, as winter has started to set it, we’ve had far more poor air quality days To quantify this, the Air Quality Index reading that you can find on the weather app is typically between 20 and 60 for cities in the US. On the bad days here, it’s gotten well over 100 and even close to 200 (I’ve even been told that last year they had a sandstorm where the air quality was at 700). As you can see in the below pictures, things can get hazy! Generally it’s unclear whether or not this is due to smog, fog, or a mix of both and best to assume the worst. When the air quality is like this, I definitely appreciate always wearing a mask outside. However, the air quality has added a new wrinkle to my morning routine as I now check the air quality before I go running (if it’s over 100, no running for me).

With all of the sightseeing and celebrating that I did in November, I got to explore a few new areas of Beijing and wanted to share some interesting photos with you. I’ve tried to break them up by region, so that you can get a sense of the different sections of the city. Early in November, I got lunch with my friend Miriam, who I met through Kehillat (and who I’ll be taking Mandarin lessons from starting Wednesday!). We went to the Vegetarian restaurant near Tsinghua (see the Vegan food section). Although I’ve been at Tsinghua for a couple months now, most days I head straight to my office, so I haven’t done too much exploring of the surrounding areas (for those familiar with BU, it’d be like if I only new where CVS and Pavement were relative to the Astronomy department). The Science Park area has some really cool art and architecture!

Beyond exploring Haidian, I’m also still constantly seeing new and interesting sights in Gulou. With Richard arriving in Beijing, I took the opportunity to show him around the area so that he could see my apartment, but also get a sense of a different part of the city, since he’s staying on campus. We wandered down some of the smaller side streets, which open up into large touristy hutong markets. I feel like I will continuously be able to explore Gulou as there’s always another street to turn down that transforms from a quiet neighborhood to a bustling market (almost like something out of Spirited Away). I particularly liked showing Richard the Houhai area at night as all of the restaurants have an absurd amount of lights and creates a Christmas lights vibe.

Between all of this months adventures, I also saw some cool advertisements (look, Jackie Chan!) and art in the subway stations. It’s really interesting how all the stations have their own unique vibe. I also got to see a bit more of the city when I went to Sanlitun for the Vegans of Beijing Thanksgiving Dinner (queue the fun tomato mascot, the giant lion, and the statue with the blue guy with his face in his hands). Additionally, this week Richard, Paulo (the other foreign postdoc – he’s been here for two years), and I went to the Wudaoku area by Tsinghua, so it was cool to see even more of the surrounding area. I was a bit surprised to see a giant abstract Christmas tree display, but I think Christmas is far more of a commercial holiday than a religious one here.

When I was exploring with Paulo and Ricard, we also ventured to the Olympic Park area, the site of the 2008 games (and some of the venues for the upcoming 2022 games). Ironically, I travel under the stadium almost every day when I head to Tsinghua as I change lines at the Olympic Park stadium. This was the first time I’d left the station to venture outside. Eagle eyed readers can see the Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted (and will again host) the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. It’s really interesting that there hasn’t been a ton of advertising (at least not that I’ve seen) for the games. Even by the stadium, the only thing that lets everyone know the Olympics are coming is a giant countdown clock (which is unfortunately on the other side of the tower in the below pictures) and that much of the area is already closed off to pedestrian traffic. They really trying to enforce the bubble. I’ve read articles that Beijing is going to close 70+ roads during the Olympics, so I’m definitely interested in how closed off the city will be during the games to best keep everyone safe and healthy. At this point, I’m not expecting to get to see any of the events in person, but I do hope I can grab a Beijing 2022 t-shirt, since this could very well be the only time I live in a city that is hosting the games.

Animals of Beijing

No Astronomer in Beijing post would be complete without a few cute pictures of my favorite dogs in Beijing Honey & Mimi. It’s so nice to see them every time I go to Roberta & Ted’s home for Shabbat. This month, I also saw a ton of neighborhood dogs in my hutong and in Gulou in general. During the snowstorm, I also saw some beautiful white ducks enjoying the Houhai lake, too! And of course, I got to see my favorite neighborhood cats. One of the cats is definitely a bit more skittish that the other, but at least I can snap some cute photos.

I also wanted to highlight the athleticism of one of the neighborhood cats. This is right in front of my doorway. The cat climbed up a pole onto the roof and then ventured around the rest of the hutong!

Jewish Life

As I mentioned above, we had our Thanksgiving and Channukkah Shabbats this month. However, we also had three other Shabbats and I wanted to highlight the themes and wonderful meals that Ted prepared. We had Guy Fawkes Day Shabbat (British food), a Traditional Shabbat (which was a nice change of pace), and Thai Shabbat. As always, the meals and conversations are wonderful and great way to wind down the week.

Vegan Food

As I mentioned above, this month, I went to the vegetarian restaurant near Tsinghua with my friend, Miriam! It was a bit of a chilly day, so we got a delicious mushroom & tofu soup, as well as watermelon juice, vegan beef with peppers, udon noodles, and a delicious taro ball dish with chestnuts and walnuts (definitely the best dish!). Walnuts & chestnuts are a local delicacy and I’ve really enjoyed seeing them in dishes and not just as a snack food. It was also really nice to catch up with Miriam outside of Shabbat. She works as an English instructor at Renmin University, which is another university in Beijing. Even though she’s from the US, she did her undergraduate degree here in Beijing, so it’s really cool to get her perspective on the city and hear how things have changed even in the last five years.

I had another yummy (albeit simpler) vegan meal when Richard and I went to Cafe Zarah, a western style cafe in Gulou. Although we had a bit of trouble finding the actual restaurant, the meal was quite good. I got a Thai Iced Tea and a Buddha bowl (which was definitely reminiscent of the bowls I used to get at Whole Heart Provisions in Boston).

Additionally, I did a bit of vegan baking of my own this month. I made a delicious (and relatively easy) vegan chocolate-peanut butter brownie cookie for Shabbat last Friday! The cookies were quite popular. One of the things that makes vegan baking a bit trickier here in China is that it’s much harder to get vegan butter (at least inexpensively). Although you can import it from the US, it usually ends up tripling in price at least, so I’ve been trying to find recipes that rely on ingredients I can get here. I also got summer yummy (non-vegan) chocolate ice cream and found oat milk VEGAN chocolate!

East Meets West

As many of you are probably aware, last month President Biden and President Xi met virtually to discuss the current US-China relationship. Although no major resolutions were reached in regards to the ongoing relationship between my home country and current country of residence, it was surprisingly nice to see President Biden’s face on TV in the subway station. I will say that being here, I’ve definitely met far more people who either work at the US Embassy or have a spouse who does (primarily through the Jewish community). I can’t think of anyone that I know that directly works in for the US government at the national level that I met while in the US, so that’s pretty different.

Beyond seeing President Biden on TV, I also saw the usual array of US images here in China. My favorite is the Simpsons mural here in Beijing. I can’t really imagine how the Simpsons is received here, especially given how uniquely American the humor is. I also saw a photo of the basketball goat Michael Jordan and two different pairs of Utah Jazz socks (if only they weren’t 150rmb, that’s a lot of socks)! Like always, I can’t go too far without seeing a Starbucks, but it was also nice to see Winnie the Pooh and Mario added to the usual array of Mickey Mouse gear that I see.

Beyond statues and photos, I did find an English language bookstore. Although I didn’t buy anything this time, it’s nice to know that there are a few options here in Beijing once I run out of books to read (I’m currently 200 pages into Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and have a bunch of other books from Jesse, but I will run out eventually).

One of the strangest western style products that I experienced this month were Cucumber Lays. Richard’s girlfriend, who is Chinese, had told him about them, so he pounced at the chance to try them and brought them into the office. I must say, this was one of the strangest foods I’ve ever tried. The level of cognitive dissonance when I was eating them was ridiculous. Texturally they are a potato chip, but they taste (right down to the cooling refreshment) like a cucumber. I was talking to one of my Chinese colleagues about these and she was surprised that we don’t have this flavor in the states. I told her that generally Americans don’t like mixing healthy things with our junk food (and these definitely have a slight veneer of health food to them – although with all of the chemicals, they definitely aren’t too healthy)!

Anime & Comics

Last, but certainly not least, are all of the anime and comics things that I saw this month. As I’ve started to get to know the different postdocs in my group, I learned that one of the Chinese postdocs is also a huge anime fan. It was really cool to hear what anime he was interested in and where there was some overlap.

In terms of actual photos, we’ll start with the hidden anime/comics that I spotted on my way to work and in Gulou (yes, that is a Batman hippo). One thing that I’ve noticed is that lots of people have nerdy car decorations/ornaments either on their dashboards or attached to their seats. While bumper stickers don’t appear to be a thing here, it’s quite interesting to see how people express their fandom here in China.

Beyond all of the hidden anime, I also wandered past a number of toy stores while searching for some small Channukkah presents for Jesse (although we aren’t able to celebrate in person due to travel restrictions, I still got him a few things). My favorite was the samurai Goku, which to my delight wasn’t terribly expensive and now sits on display in my living room (I also got one for Jesse). Although I’m a huge fan of Dragon Ball Z and One Piece, it’s always nice to see other shows represented like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dr. Stone, Demon Slayer, Gundam, Slam Dunk, Astro Boy, Sword Art Online, Naruto, and Gin Tama. I also found some of the fun gatcha-pod machines (a slightly more expensive version of the coin operated toy machines that they have in grocery stores where I used to get the mini football helmets as a kid) featuring Dragon Ball Z and One Piece among others.

I also saw lots of American comics related statues, too! Although it was mostly Marvel, including a cool life sized Iron Man statue in 798, I also saw (and bought) some of the cute mini-DC figures and some of the Peanuts Spaceman Snoopy figures!

And with that, that ties a nice bow around the last month here in Beijing. For all of your who made it this far, thank you so much for reading my blog! I hope you have a lovely last night of Channukkah (I’ll tell you about the conclusion of Channukkah next month). I really hope you enjoyed my blog and I would love to hear from you. If you haven’t already subscribed and are interested in doing so, the button is right on the side to the right. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and continue to stay safe and healthy! Hopefully my next month will be productive, but also full of a few adventures and delicious food to share with you all.

In Peace,

Emmet